A brown bear who became an unlikely hero after serving alongside Polish soldiers during the Second World War is finally to be honoured with a statue in Warsaw.

Wojtek, who was adopted as a cub by Polish soldiers stationed in Iran during 1941, liked to share beers and a cigarette with his fellow comrades, was taught to salute when greeted, and provided a welcome distraction to the horrors of war.

By 1944 and at 6ft tall on his hind legs and weighing in at close to 500lbs he was enrolled in the Polish army with his own rank and service number to circumvent orders that forbade animals from being taken to the frontline.

Showing no fear under fire, the Syrian brown bear joined the 22nd company of the Polish Army and carried live munitions during the battle at Monte Cassino, a feat that led him to become one of Poland's best loved war heroes.

Now, after a long campaign, he is to be honoured in the country he served, but never visited, with a statue in the centre of Warsaw.

The Wojtek Memorial Trust, led by Aileen Orr, the Scottish author of a biography of the bear, is in discussions to send a bronze statue of Wojtek for erection in the Polish capital as well as one in Edinburgh.

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The bear, whose name translates as "smiling warrior" lived out his post-war years in Edinburgh Zoo dying there in 1962 at the age of 22.

He was donated to the zoo after his company was relocated to Berwickshire in Scotland at the end of the war.

He would wave to visitors who addressed him in Polish and zoo keepers regularly had to deal with visiting soldiers who clambered into his enclosure to hug him.

Mrs Orr, who as a child was regaled with stories of the bear from her grandfather who encountered him several times during the war, and who remembers visiting the bear at Edinburgh Zoo when she was eight years old, has led the campaign to commemorate him.

"When the time came for the Poles to leave (Scotland), they had to make a decision, did they shoot him or put him in Edinburgh zoo? The men cried like babies, they were so distraught when they had to leave him behind in the zoo."